The city admits its snow clearing plan is falling short as northeast Calgary streets remain packed with snow.

With more than twice the amount of average snow having already fallen in recent weeks, crews have been scrambling — and failing — to keep up in neighbourhoods.

But the city’s roads crew boss says he’s revamping the current seven-day snow removal plan and will spare no expense digging out residents who have been housebound for days.

“It’s obvious, our efforts haven’t been good enough. I’m the first to admit to those in the northeast it’s a tough time,” said Ryan Jestin, director of the city roads department.

After two large snowstorms buried the city earlier this month, only the main roads and bus routes were cleared, in keeping with city snow removal policy.

Communities were left to dig themselves out, especially the hardest hit northeast. The snowdrifts in the northeast have also caused problems for the city’s waste and recycling services.

On Monday, council directed roads to revamp its snow removal policies and procedures.

“Clearly we need more equipment and I would argue more people available on standby,” said Jestin.

“We need to be better the next time we have one of these events. And we will be better.”

Over the next two days, the city is vowing to keep digging the northeast communities clear of snow and ice. Officials say they’ve fielded thousands of complaints and are hoping to quell rumours that roads are impassible to emergency vehicles.

“I’ve added extra contractors, I’ve taken every single bit of equipment we’ve got across the city not being used on priority one and two routes,” Jestin said Wednesday from the city’s Saddleridge depot.

The city’s snow and ice clearing budget is $34 million. There is also a reserve fund available to deal with severe snow events.

Already, the city has spent $26 million. It may burn through another $3 million in coming days.

But council has given roads the green light to hire contractors and expensive equipment to help clear back roads.

“This isn’t about money, we’re going to keep going until the streets are in good shape for everyone to get where they need to go in a timely fashion,” said Jestin.

There are offers from neighbouring towns to help with snow removal. The city says it is willing to pay to get more contractors and 50 more vehicles from Volker Stevin, Kidco Construction and Standard General Inc.

“There is a price to pay to have more equipment on standby, but that’s certainly one of the avenues we’ll explore,” he said.

“It’s quite clear that we need that help. I think we can leverage contractors maybe better or differently and we’re going to look at more equipment and people standing by. The simple reality is we need more equipment, more blowing equipment that will help us remove snow from those hard hit areas.”

The city’s current snow and ice removal policy and procedures targets a seven days run from the end of a snowstorm to residential roads cleared.

But with multiple snow storms over the past five weeks, plows weren’t keeping up.

“Quite obviously, it hasn’t happened over the last two and a half weeks. Part of it is that we’ve had six snowstorms virtually back to back to back. ”The city focused Wednesday on the snow and ice-caked roads in Taradale, Martindale, Coral Springs, Saddleridge and across Deerfoot in Coventry Hills.

With so much snow piling up as crews continue removing it, especially in the northeast, the city is running out of places to dump scooped up snow.

City crews have moved 40,000 tonnes of snow in the last 10 days.

“I don’t normally move that amount of snow in the whole winter,” said Jestin.

With five city snow dumps filling up, officials are concerned about where to store snow from coming months.

Typically, from November to the middle of December, Calgary receives an average of 26 cm of snow.

This year, closer to 70 cm has fallen.

And winter doesn’t officially start until Friday.

This winter is helping make the argument for the city to use more snow removal equipment.

“I think they’ve done a great job for what they’ve had to do,” said Ward 5 Coun. Ray Jones.

“The only problem that we’re having is in the internal residential roads and communities and it’s because we just don’t have the equipment,” he said.

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